Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
rating with local governments and the Centre for Earth Science Studies
(CESS), the organization trained people how to identify and inventory
watersheds and water bodies, various plants, land boundaries, and other
natural resources.45 The KSSP and CESS envisaged that gathering this in-
formation would inform contingency planning and other resource man-
agement efforts by local governments and communities.
In 1996, the KSS's environmental programs crossed paths with
Kerala's decentralization reforms, the People's Plan. The newly elected
LDF government claimed that the inspiration for the People's Plan came
from the grassroots successes of the KSSP —its Total Literacy Programme,
mapping campaigns, and its botom-up approach of empowering people
to revolutionize society. The KSSP's leaders, many of whom were card-
carrying members of LDF parties, were pulled into implementing the
People's Plan, as well as developing the LDF's local self- government in-
stitutions.46 This is precisely what happened to Prasad; his current job
is networking and computerizing local governments in Kerala. Many
other volunteers who had participated in the KSSP's literacy and mapping
programs were also called upon to assist with statewide decentralization
projects.47
As a result of the marriage between Kerala's environmental move-
ment and its local-level politics, environmental issues became formally
implanted in state-level discussions. Some scholars hailed the state's de-
centralization reforms as a “new model” with considerable potential to
engage Keralites and their governments in sustainable development.48
Natural resources now play a more prominent role in various government
departments and their programs. For example, the Department of Tour-
ism regularly features Kerala's mountains and seascapes in its market-
ing materials, to draw visitors to the state. It has even nicknamed Kerala
“God's Own Country,” to promote the idea of Kerala as Eden, perfect
in its natural landscapes.49 In 2010, LDF finance minister Thomas Isaac
delivered the first ever “Red and Green” ( Pachayum Chuvappum ) annual
budget to the state's Legislative Assembly—the first budget, in Isaac's
view, to foreground the importance of the environment in Kerala's poli-
tics and economic plans alongside civil welfare.50 In the state's 2013-2014
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